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Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

nytimes.com

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Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

#111

Post by klipt »

humbledrone wrote: post #74
inerte wrote: post #20

After reading Winners Take All my level of cynicism is through the roof with headlines like this. $10b of his own personal fortune? That won't results in tax breaks / deduction because can be considered a donation? Or does that include money Amazon-the-company is spending on "climate change" efforts, such as buying electric delivery trucks instead of gas ones? Investments in "green datacenters"? Is any of this new in…

I frequently see the "they're just doing this for the tax breaks" sentiment for these kinds of donations (especially when the donor is a corporation or hyper-wealthy individual) but I don't understand the reasoning. From what I understand of tax deductions, a donation of $X basically means that the donor can skip paying taxes on $X of income. This results in a savings of tax% * $X, which is always The tax deduction a…

Yeah the donation deduction is just a form of leverage. You effectively pay X but the charity gets 2X (actual multiplier depends on your marginal tax rate).

One way of looking at it is that the government is "matching" part of your donation with tax money.

But you never make money that way.

Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

#112

Post by loceng »

legitster wrote: post #63
viburnum wrote: post #52

Be smarter to just back a political movement, but that would actually work, and diminish Bezos's own power.

I don't understand this. Backing a political movement is probably the worst thing he could do. He's completely distrusted politically, and polls terribly with the general public. He would only taint any movement he backed.

If he had backed (now suspended) Presidential candidate Andrew Yang early enough he could have aligned himself with Yang's message: highlighting too that Amazon paid $0 in taxes + is closing 30% of malls, etc. - which would be him acknowledging and responding to the issues at hand that Yang; allowing him to acknowledge the current system's structure - that all companies including Jeff's - must compete within, but that it's ultimately a problem for society (even if it's good for the economy/GDP).

Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

#113

Post by KoftaBob »

inerte wrote: post #20

After reading Winners Take All my level of cynicism is through the roof with headlines like this. $10b of his own personal fortune? That won't results in tax breaks / deduction because can be considered a donation? Or does that include money Amazon-the-company is spending on "climate change" efforts, such as buying electric delivery trucks instead of gas ones? Investments in "green datacenters"? Is any of this new in…

The people who make the "they're just doing it for tax deductions" argument give me the feeling that they don't understand what a tax deduction is.

All it means is that his taxable income will be whatever his income is minus that $10B. He's not getting a net benefit from doing this.

To make the math easier, consider someone making $100k and paying a 30% tax rate. If they donate $10k to charity, rather than pay 30k in taxes, they're paying 27k in taxes. They saved 3k in taxes, but they still donated $10k, so they're out 7k.

If his entire objective was to pay less in taxes, stashing it in the Cayman Islands would make way more sense than donating it.

Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

#114

Post by jordigh »

standardUser wrote: post #54
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #7

Do we know how much emissions can be attributed to Amazon / AWS? I'm curious if this $10 billion fund could offset that or if it's too small to cover their own use. Though, to be fair to Amazon, this is at least a good goal: > Amazon expects 80% of its energy use to come from renewable energy sources by 2024, up from a current rate of 40%, before transition to zero emissions by 2030.

It's kind of irrelevant how much harm a single company does, since that company exists to serve a demand that would simply be filled by other companies if it didn't exist. Maybe those theoretical other companies would have marginally better business practices vis-a-vis the environment, but it's not like they would operate in a wholly alternative economic system.

It's not irrelevant: a single company can undertake different economic activities that produce the same economic outputs with different ecological results. I've seen this first-hand in my line of work. When you make companies publish their greenhouse gas KPIs, they start to reduce them.

Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

#115

Post by rapind »

0xCMP wrote: post #104
rapind wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't care because it's better that a billionaire chooses where that money goes instead of a democratically elected government? I'm not poking fun either. That's really what you seem to be saying. Does this still work if he puts this money towards a cause you're not keen of?

You're right, but also what are we doing in the meantime? What's the point of having that kind of money except to do huge initiatives like this?

Hey I don't care what he does with his money as long as it's legal. I'm not going to give him a big huge tax break so he can decide where my taxes go though.

Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

#116

Post by Smoosh »

phillc73 wrote: post #79
legitster wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the worst polluters are state owned coal plants. There are some private energy producers, but from what I understand, most energy companies just act as interstate brokers between local agencies.

Then, buy the biggest coal mining companies and shut them down (or convert to renewables). In 2016, Australia was the world's biggest net coal exporter[1] with 32% of global exports and the fourth highest producer. As far as I know, all coal mining in Australia is undertaken by private companies who hold a mining lease. The $10billion could be used to buy controlling interests in some of the 10 biggest listed coal mi…

Don't forget to allow a few hundred million to donate to political parties (particularly the incumbents), as the current minerals/mining lobby is quite entrenched.

Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

#117

Post by Znafon »

ocschwar wrote: post #61
Will_Do wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He will definitely save a bit of money on taxes. I suspect his marginal tax rate is ~24% (20% Cap Gains + 4% Medicare). So this donation will lower his net worth by ~7.6B. In any case, this is a giant amount of money by philanthropic standards. I doubt more than 4-5 people have ever given as much for all of the things they support.

Normally I'd resent the $2.4 billion tax dodge, but given who receives the money right now, I'm okay with.

I'm not sure it's a "tax dodge", he just won't pay income tax on the money he donated.

Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

#118

Post by bcrosby95 »

monadic2 wrote: post #76
planetzero wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this matter? If he truly is pledging $10B, it can only be a win for society and the future of humanity. It shouldn't really matter if he gets a tax break or not.

I wouldn’t call relying on consensual handouts from rich people a win for society.

Maybe governments are good sometimes, but sometimes individuals unilaterally deciding something is a problem can be good too. We can have it both ways, and we currently do.

Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

#119

Post by radicalbyte »

inerte wrote: post #20

After reading Winners Take All my level of cynicism is through the roof with headlines like this. $10b of his own personal fortune? That won't results in tax breaks / deduction because can be considered a donation? Or does that include money Amazon-the-company is spending on "climate change" efforts, such as buying electric delivery trucks instead of gas ones? Investments in "green datacenters"? Is any of this new in…

He's going to find a way to make those tax savings either way so it's great to see him doing something positive.

Re: Jeff Bezos Commits $10B to Address Climate Change

#120

Post by codekilla »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #68
KerryJones wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting idea but impractical to implement. Not all companies are for sale, there are still real uses for coal, and "forcing something to happen" doesn't always makes sense. It's his job to be the best capital allocator he can be, and buying a company just to shut it down is a way to lose a lot of money. Since they are sinking on their own, fighting to find better solutions for the future might have bee…

You would find economic ways to disable these companies from operating. You mustn’t buy a whole company to do this. Maybe you buy a key piece of real estate they need and tie them up in court for years. Maybe you find key employees and hire them away and pay them to garden at the Spheres in Seattle. Maybe you convince a port to no longer allow the transfer of coal through there using economic coercion or donations to…

Do you think there is any appetite for funding these types of alternative ‘campaigns’. I’ve also thought a bit about this.
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